


Desert Island Disk

by 7Threes



Series: Jigsaw Falling Into Place [9]
Category: Persona 4, Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: A Bit Convoluted, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Attempt at Humor, ESP, Existential, Final Palace Spoilers, Guilt, Heavy Acid Trip, I had a stroke while writing this, Kansas (Band) - Freeform, Major canon divergence, Mental Health Issues, Mental Illness, Musical References, Other, Persona 5 Protagonist is from Inaba, Play the game dammit, Poetry, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, RSD | Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, Radiohead, References to De-Loused In The Comatorium, Serious Retconning, Slow Burn, Songfic, Sort of Original Characters, Sort of post-canon, Spoilers, Spoilers for 4th Palace, Strange Descriptions, The Dear Hunter - Freeform, The Mars Volta, The Metaverse, Time-Loop AU, Trippy, gay relationship, heavy spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-02-16 16:42:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18695365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/7Threes/pseuds/7Threes
Summary: Part 9 of many to a series attributed under the name “Jigsaw Falling Into Place”, not to be confused with the work that will occur later on. Check the collection description for more details on the series as a whole.Akira is from Inaba AU, Time-Loop AU, Major Canon Divergence. Updates to the series biweekly.A memory may be fond, but they're a ghost that will haunt you so long as you live. Akira must deal with the burden of not only his own memories, but the revenants that haunt others as well.





	Desert Island Disk

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: If you thought the fuckery couldn't get any worse from All I Need, you're sorely mistaken.
> 
> Also, just in case you'd like to go in with an understanding of certain words and phrases, here you go:
> 
> E.C.T/Electroconvulsive Therapy - a treatment that stimulates a patient's brain while they're under anesthesia, and is used to treat people with major depressive disorder. Strangely, the therapy works very well.
> 
> Wolftime - it doesn't really mean anything, I just put it in there to add impact. The text refers to Futaba's Pyramid as "a gestated tomb engendered by wolftime regrets" which can roughly be known as "a birthed pyramid brought by wolftime regrets", so in this context wolftime refers to the nature of Futaba's guilt towards the death of her mother. Wolves are often attributed to the phrase "a wolf in sheeps' clothing", i.e. a charlatan (something posing as something that it is not), where I mostly source my references to hounds of any likeness to De-Loused in the Comatorium, where in the song Inertiatic ESP it states "dolls wreck/rack the mincemeat of pupils; cast in/casted oblong arms length; the hooks have been picking their scabs where wolves hide in the company of men/man," I believe the correct lyrics are "dolls wreck", "cast in"m and "of man", as then the lyric then refers to the goddess of De-Loused, Clavietika Tresojos (three eyes) having sacrifices brought to her by religious zealots who worship her ("dolls" being the followers, and the fact that the "pupils" are "mincemeat" means that aspects of Tresojos, her followers, are providing a mangled sacrifice), "cast in oblong arms length" highlights her religious significance because "oblong arms length" would be like casting your arms perpendicular to your body, much like the cross that Jesus Christ was crucified on according to biblical text. "The hooks have been picking their scabs"; the lyricist, Cedric Bixler-Zavala, before used the term "scabs" to describe an issue that has been somewhat healed over with time, but keeps re-opening in the song Invalid Litter Department during his work with At The Drive-In, a "rehired scab". Hooks, of course, are on fishing rods and often stuck with bait to lure in fish, their prey. In this case, the opportunistic keep picking at old wounds. Why? Well, the next part, "where wolves hide in the company of man", describes the motive quite clearly. The opportunistic exploit old wounds to inevitably prey on those who look up to them, and by using the term of "man" instead of "men" implies that there are these people everywhere, mankind is plagued with foolishness and exploitation. It's sort of like a frankenword from german that no single english word can really explain the feeling behind, as time doesn't simply refer to the passage of events, or the aging of something. Time refers to a finite source, a period, an instance. To put it simply, the word "wolftime" refers to the exclusive time in which one has been preyed upon and fooled that changes their perception of a situation entirely, despite that period of vulnerability was overall small in comparison to the circumstances in which what is being sold to the individual is actually wrong, or the opposite of the situation. It's basically being convinced PewDiePie is a bad person because of all these small things that are capitalized and sold by the media who have shown only one side, to which a fan may turn against PewDiePie if naïve enough to fall for it despite the overwhelming amount of positive things that Felix has done.
> 
> House of split skulls - no, not literally. This ties in a quote from Abraham Lincoln, "A house divided against itself cannot stand", and the lyrics of Televators by The Mars Volta which say, "A house half the way; fell empty with teeth that split both these lips". The lyrics refer to the suicide of Cerpin Taxt during Televators, where he jumps off of an overpass; upon hitting the concrete, his face split. I use skulls in this instant to refer to the mind, or personality, i.e. a split personality. This is, of course, the bisection of Lavenza; Caroline & Justine.
> 
> Sorry for the massive block of text, by the way.
> 
> Anyone else write in their spare time? Do you guys have the same issues that I do with writing? I keep having a stroke then writing it down.

_Kurusu_

 

Their triumph over Kaneshiro was short-lived, because almost immediately afterwards, the magnanimous hacker group Medjed declared war on them. A little this and a little that, and then _BOOM_ , they’re inside the hot and unwelcoming heart of Sakura Futaba, who coincidentally was not only the Phantom Thieves’ only hope at defeating Medjed, but also Boss’s adopted daughter.

 

Akira _knew_ all of this, but he also tried his best to forget the fact that Futaba’s Palace was a fucking _pyramid in a desert._ It was hotter - and Satan could confirm - than _hell_ . The icy snake couldn’t even keep Akira any semblance of cool in the arid heat that scorched his skin, it was _miserable._ At one point, Satanael started to panic, repeating, _“Ice Age coming, Ice Age coming…”_

 

But for once, he would thank _god_ that the inside of the pyramid had air conditioning.

 

“Hey man, how come ya got such strong Personas?” Ryuji asked, and Akira smirked devilishly.

 

_“Money.”_ he’d snarkily reply, “Maybe you could buy yourself a Persona if you got a job.”

 

“Stop messin’ with me, man!”

 

They’d laugh on their ascension, and flirt too. Much to the annoyance of the other Thieves. He then met himself with one Anubis statue in particular, it seemed to speak in undead words from the past, stolen words to talk to him like a Persona would.

 

_“Is it you, Moatilliatta?”_

 

_Moatilliatta… Moatilliatta… Isn’t that the killer of Clavietika Tres Ojos? The goddess who reigned over the ESP?_

 

And then it struck, _he_ was Moatilliatta. The words were oddly reminiscent of something, and he didn’t know why it was locked in Futaba’s Palace.

 

“Hey Joker! The traps’re already gone, man! What’s the hold up?”

 

The leader of the Phantom Thieves turned back to meet his team, his confidants, his _friends - Queen, Skull, Mona, Fox, Panther-_

 

_-and beside them, he imagined a checkered and horned trickster, the very first…_

 

_… Loki._

  


He blinked away the Persona, one of the very few that lacked in his compendium that was managed by the girls in the house of split lips, and the realm overseen by dark eyes. It left with the familiar voice, the imprint;

  


_“Is it you, Moatilliatta? - I’ve got a pain inside that’ll rip through the very fabric of time, - Keep them safe and by your side.”_

  


The vision faded, and Akira placed his hand on the wall of the pyramid, recognizing the Persona that breathed as it - Necronomicon, Prometheus, a hoard of knowledge forbidden through time. It was Loki, reminding him of what Tremulant commanded.

 

“A-ah ha-ha… I just got a little deja vu, that’s all…” Joker was clammed up, cold when the recollection hit him. In the gestated tomb engendered by wolftime regrets, the dry of his skin chilled finally with the whispered husks of cryogenic tendency, the red-blue-green flickered before in the swallow of this screen - reality projected for once before disbelieving eyes, glass orbs that realized; a brief moment in time, his actions had not been his own.

 

Nocturnal phoenix, defiant of Osiris, the flock of their wings that burned the sky like the smokestacks of ethnic cleansings - sober burn behind the sclera into the ocular orbit crater particular, occipital lobe recognition of the simulation in which he once lived; the books may have been burned, but the idea flourished postmortem in the allowance of this fill - ill wills replaced by a puppet master where he was the surrogate of, but not the malevolent hands that bent him backwards to destruction. He felt the difference between past and present tense; that the flesh before was not even plastic, but of red, blue green, of red, blue, green; where wolves hide in the company of men, the stance of his existence limited to ratio like gold, the wires by which he was controlled. It was disillusionment, where thrived Tremulant.

 

The panic set in like a buzz, but his mind didn’t register the spine reflex his gut did. Disconnect, blossomed in the petals of an E.C.T., where the personality of another bled into his mind through way of capillaries north of the navel, conduit through space and time and pain and life, tourniquet haltings nullified by the sheer force, by the hundreds of years he lived but never aged - broken record lifespans, a song he could never remember the lyrics to, until fed to him by impossibilities inherited through cognition and fingerprinted pasts that never were.

 

He fell onto the floor, paralyzed from his spine’s impulse to defy the rationality of his mind, that had already accepted that he would house the hearts of others as his own; house of split skulls, cranial bleeding, as Loki licked his mind with;

 

_“Exoskeletal junction at the railroad delayed.”_

 

_Is this the burden Akechi has?_ Akira found himself agonizing over, absent yet present when his teammates rushed to his side to aid him. The masks they had did not mask their worries.

 

“Is everythin’ alright, Akira?” Skull was the first to question, but was reprimanded for using his actual name.

 

“Mmh…” Joker grunted, bleary from the successive flashes in his mind, “Sorry guys, I didn’t think I needed to use any healing items after that fight.” It was a lie, but he couldn’t tell them. They wouldn’t believe him.

 

Queen looked down at him in skepticism, but relented after a few moments when Joker picked himself up and off of the ground.

 

“You’re our leader, you should take care of yourself the _most.”_ the biker shook her head, disappointment barely hidden behind the metal plates of her mask.

 

“Yes. We’re up against powerful enemies, I doubt they’d be merciful when you show them your weakness.” Fox joined in, arms crossed.

 

They proceeded through the Palace, as per usual for them - but in Akira’s terms, it was a trip through memory lane.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

_Sakamoto_

 

He had noticed the strange behavior of Joker ever since they had entered the Palace, and it only got progressively worse the deeper they went and the higher they got. It was almost like the demons their leader fought in the pyramid were also his own, and upon the revelation of the door that blocked their pursuit, something strange happened to Joker - like he was looking into something that Skull couldn’t even fathom.

 

“Hey man, ya alright?” he placed a yellow gloved hand on his leader’s shoulder, worry in his face.

 

Joker froze then shrugged, awkwardly different than his typical smooth movements. The leader of the Phantom Thieves looked Skull in the eye, like a deer in the headlights and said.

 

_“Dare not to speak its name, dedicated to all human beings - I am born again - I am back to save the universe.”_

 

The charge commander removed his hand from his boyfriend, who seemed _so far gone_ , away from himself. While the other Thieves were descending to exit the Palace, they stood there. For the first time since they met, he was _scared_ of the transfer student. It felt like Joker has something inside him, crawling in his head to make him disconnect from his senses.

 

Joker recognized the look of fear on Skull’s face beneath the mask, and quickly switched back to his regular self, and apologized.

 

“I’m sorry, Ryuji. I don’t know what got into me.”

 

“Don’t lie to me, man. I know you only adjust your gloves when you’re hidin’ somethin’.” Skull huffed towards his leader.

 

He didn’t like the way Joker looked small, that something was eating away at his leader, but the Thief wouldn’t spill it or confide in his best friend, his boyfriend.

 

_“Would you believe me if I said this is not the first time I’ve lived through this year?”_

  
  


He blinked.

 

_I mean, I get that it feels like we’ve known each other since forever, but…_

  


“Never mind…” his leader dismissed before he followed the rest of the Thieves down the steps of the tomb, and left Skull to his own thoughts.

 

The charge commander looked at the door, and vaguely felt like it was familiar, that he could’ve navigated the whole Palace on spine impulse, muscle memory.

 

He recalled how the name _‘Captain Kidd’_ first slid off his tongue so easily, and how it felt right whenever he awoke _‘Seiten Taisei’_ , like it was destiny.

 

Most of all, he remembered the odd familiarity he got when he first observed Akira’s face, like he had seen him before. He first thought that it might’ve been that he had seen him on the streets, but after hearing that he lived in _Inaba_ before moving to Tokyo, he found himself questioning his memory.

 

_“Strange desire;_

 

_“Seems there’s nothing else for me to find;_

 

_“‘Cause I’ve been here, and I’ve been there,_

 

_“Seems like I’ve been everywhere before;_

 

_“I’ve seen it all a hundred times;_

 

_“Still I think there surely must be more.”_

 

He didn’t know what his Persona tried to tell him, uncertain that his assertion in the first place would be accurate.

 

 

 

* * *

  
  
  


_Kurusu_

  
  


When the Phantom Thieves stole Futaba’s Treasure - or when Futaba battled her inner demons, to be more accurate, Akira was relieved. Relieved despite the world that crumbled around him, because Futaba had been _saved._ This was his last chance to save everyone he could, and he was glad that he could save her.

 

The back of his mind itched, though, for he knew there were more to save.

 

After Futaba passed out, Ryuji had asked to talk to him. He thought nothing of it really, since he always hung out with Ryuji.

 

There seemed to be more on the charge commander’s mind that time, however.

 

Back in Leblanc’s attic, where Akechi had made himself absent from a few weeks ago _(Akira hadn’t been able to contact the detective, which worried him greatly)_ , the two sat down on the cheap mattress that Akira slept on.

 

The leader looked over towards his right-hand man with a questioning look, as if saying _‘what’s wrong?’_ without using words.

 

The other sighed, face long and stressed from worry, “What did you mean when ya said that back there, ‘n Futaba’s Palace ‘n front of the door? It’s got me thinkin’ a _lot_ lately.”

 

Akira folded his hands and tried to recall what he had said, remembering that he had a hard time traversing that particular Palace.

 

_Oh…_ he then realized.

 

He sat back on the bed and tried to think of a way to explain this _mess_ of _“destiny”_ and _“fate”_ to Ryuji, and resolved to start from the beginning.

  
  


_From the beginning…_

  
  


“It started when my Personas started talking to me, and giving me these dreams… Things that haven’t happened yet, names I’ve never heard - I started to get these phantom pains, too. Scars of the past that don’t exist on this skin get sore, and there are times I see myself _die.”_

 

He gauged Ryuji’s response, which seemed to be that of curiosity and confusion. Akira decided to continue.

 

“From all those dreams, I’ve counted how many times this year has replayed. _Three hundred eighty-seven,_ Ryuji, I have lived this year _three hundred eighty-seven_ times.”

 

“Why’s the year repeatin’, though? I mean… I don’t remember any of that.” Ryuji’s brows furrowed in confusion and thought.

 

“Ah, I guess you wouldn’t remember. The Treasure of Mementos… the desire of the general public… they wanted to be controlled. So Mementos created a god.” he paused, “This god controls the world, and we have been unable to completely defeat him _three hundred eighty-seven_ times. He resets the year, over and over again.”

 

His boyfriend scratched his head, still unable to wrap his mind around it, “S-so, how come you remember ‘n’ I can’t?”

 

Akira hugged Ryuji’s waist with his face buried into his shoulder, and hummed from behind him, chest pressed against his partner’s back. “Maybe your Persona doesn’t have words to describe it to you.” he started to rub the other’s back gently, “I could maybe _say_ some things that would get you to remember, though.”

 

The charge commander flushed at Akira’s hands-on affection, untypical of the leader, “U-uh, sure, you can _try.”_

 

_“There’s an empty space inside my heart where the weeds take root, and now I’ll set you free.”_

 

Ryuji felt the nostalgia ebb slightly in his head, where the red arteries of the human unconscious draped themselves over rigid ebony architecture, unto the heart of man did they coil.

 

_“ ...Are you such a dreamer to put the world to rights? I’ll stay home forever, where two and two always makes a five…”_

 

It reminded him of the voices, the ones who gave up. The depths, the final dream he had before the start of the school year.

 

_“... Don’t get big ideas, they’re not not gonna happen. - Don’t question my authority or put me in a box, - Ambition makes you look pretty ugly. - Dreamers… They never learn… Beyond the point… Of no return…”_

 

The _Holy Grail_ , the angular god that squashed them down.

 

_“They don’t speak for us - You really messed up everything - This one’s optimistic - You can try the best you can - The best you can is good enough - One day I’ll get to you, and teach you how to get to purest hell.”_

 

_That’s right_ , Satanael was summoned last time, but not in time to save the Phantom Thieves. The Persona simply burned with the rest of them, the repetition repeated.

 

It took a minute to sink in, the pain of death as he remembered. _Sure_ , he had gotten pains before, but he’d just thought he was sore from the Metaverse. But it was more than that.

 

Times at night, agonizing pains would spike from his back to left side, like a burn that singed off his skin, but when he stumbled out of bed to look at himself, the skin would be there. No amount of anti-inflammatory medicines or water he poured on it did anything to stop it. Akira noticed Ryuji’s pain, and recognized it from when he had died from the explosion on the Ark.

 

“I’m sorry, Ryuji…” the leader muttered into the back of Ryuji’s shirt, where Ryuji’s arm fiercely reddened in placebo pains, “... I have let you die.”

 

The other shook his head, and took Akira’s hand in his own, “Don’t worry ‘bout it, man. I’m here now, even if a little in pain.”

 

Akira smiled back, “I’m glad you are.”

 

The charge commander smiled back, turned and leaned in to kiss his boyfriend.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me and add me on any of my accounts!  
> Tumblr - diivizkrah, or 7threes  
> Twitter - @diivizkrah  
> Discord - Uncle Miles#4470 (will update my pinned tweet if the username changes)  
> Xbox One - Elak Kval
> 
> Just a fair warning, I don't really use Tumblr. I think I'm on there about 5 minutes per two months. If you want to really message me, hit my up on Discord and Twitter.
> 
> GOING TO GO INTO A NERD RANT FOR A BIT!
> 
> I once did a research project on what the ancient Egyptian afterlife was like, the rituals, the gods/goddesses, etc.  
> To avoid confusion, Osiris was the god of harvests and whatever before he was killed by his chaotic brother Set/Seth, who did so (I think, I don't remember too well) because Set/Seth's wife was into Osiris, or because Osiris was married to Isis or something along those lines. He was resurrected by the jackal-headed god, Anubis, NOT the god of death or the underworld, but of purely mummification. Osiris was brought back because Anubis mummified him, which I guess to the ancient Egyptians saw as a sign of preserving the vessel of a soul(?) We'll get into that later. Only then, when Osiris was revived by Anubis, did he become the god of the underworld. The underworld isn't something like Tartarus or Hell for the Egyptians, and was sort of like a place of enlightenment whilst a soul was detached from its vessel, which can exist outside the vessel, but requires for the vessel to remain intact for their soul to remain (if I remember right). 
> 
> The Egyptians mummified their dead in a strange way, too. This was because of a ritual known as the weighing of the heart, where the mummified will have all organs removed except their heart, which is to be brought with them to be weighed by a group of gods. The ritual was that the heart would be put on a scale against the Feather of Truth; were the heart to weigh more, the soul would be devoured by "Ammut the Gobbler", and would forever roam the overworld. Were the heart to weigh less, the soul would be granted passage to the underworld.
> 
> Of course, you know that Egyptian legend states that every dawn, Osiris is reborn, and every dusk, he perishes. "Nocturnal phoenix" is supposed to be Akira, who is shrouded in rebellion like Set/Seth, being forced to endure Osiris' (Yaldabaoth) recycling year.  
> ALSO, THOTH ISN'T A MONKEY, HE'S A BIRD. Just saying.


End file.
